The 2020 Bihar Assembly elections will always be remembered as one of the closest and most dramatic contests in the state’s political history, a battle where just a few thousand votes separated victory from defeat. It was in this election that Tejashwi Yadav, then 31, emerged from the shadows of his father’s legacy to become a formidable political force, nearly unseating the seasoned Nitish Kumar.

In the final tally, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) scraped through with 125 seats, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Grand Alliance secured 110 in the 243-member House. Yet beneath the numbers lay a story of narrow margins and what-ifs – the NDA polled 37.26 per cent of the total votes, just 0.03 per cent ahead of the Grand Alliance’s 37.23 per cent. The difference amounted to bar

See Full Page